


prodigal son

by foundCarcosa



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gen, Graphic Description, Religious Conflict, Torture, scaphism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Christian convert of darker ages is wrongfully sentenced to death by 'the boats'. He is kept company by a psychopomp as he waits to die.<br/>--Much like the son of his adopted god, it takes him three days to die and be reborn. Unlike the son of his adopted god, he will not be coming back to save us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	prodigal son

The flies were buzzing already, a low whine accompanying the screams and pleas of the victim. Jonah keened and wailed, knowing what was in store but having no more to do about it but pray, and pray hard. Sweat dripped from his fevered brow, his eyes turned upwards and squinting against the sun. _Please hear me, O Lord. I am your loyal and faithful servant..._

The men who carried him stopped. Jonah reluctantly brought his gaze back down to earth, bile rising in his scratchy and raw throat as he beheld his future. A mossy, damp scent rose from the inside of the tree, the hollow roughly the size of a half-grown male. Beetles scuttled around and into the hole. The sun was merciless. Jonah felt as though he was breathing in nothing but dust.

"Twas not me," he whimpered, "that killed the man. I am Christian, through and through..."

He was lashed to the tree with thick, scratchy rope wrapped around his middle, leaving his head and limbs jutting forth and dangling like bait. His blubbering quieted, and when he looked up into the face of the sun again, he saw that his God was not there.

 _"Eat!"_ came the coarse command from Jonah's tormentor, who wrenched his jaw open and shoved chunks of pure honey into his mouth. He could barely chew and swallow the combs before more was being introduced, the sickly-sweet substance making him gag. And then came the thick, fresh milk, warmed by the sun, making his stomach lurch. _...And I will bring you to a land flowing with milk and honey..._

Tears streamed down Jonah's burnt and flaking face; the sickening substances kept coming. His belly was bloated with them. He belched, and regurgitated milk spilled thickly over his cracked lip. Laughter. _"Eat, pig. Eat, murderer."_

His belly rumbled audibly, an ominous sound that did not go unnoticed by his tormentors. Satisfied, they smeared his sunburnt limbs and face with the remainder of the honey they carried, forcing it to ooze from the combs and onto his skin. The flies buzzed louder. Perspiration burned his bloodshot eyes; the thick scent of the honey mingled with his own fetid odour. It would only get worse.

Then they left him. High noon had not yet arrived; he had much time to bake in the arid environment. And the pool of water behind him, part of this desert oasis, would only be a breeding ground for those minute creatures that would remain even in the dead of night to burrow deep within him and bear ravenous offspring.

Time passed, in its inexorable slowness. No cloud passed over the sun as it cantered across the dome of the sky.

Jonah had no dignity upon which to depend. He sobbed helplessly as the diarrhea dripped into the hollow of the tree, wet splatting noises against the wood and moss. The flies alit on him, his lips and hands and toes, depositing their cargo before buzzing away. The sun rose to its peak. Jonah hung limply from his bonds, slipping into a feverish unconsciousness. Exhaustion was absolute.

"Seán."

Jonah awoke with a start. The sky's lurid red and orange made his stomach lurch. The flies' buzzing had quieted down, but now his ears were filled with the scuttling and scurrying of earth-bound insects. ...Insects, and the wispy, echoing voice.

"They sent me for you, Seán, but you are not yet expired."

"My name... is not Seán," Jonah mumbled, but his esophagus was so ravaged that his voice was barely a whisper.

"Mm... yes. Jonah, the Dove. A symbol of the benevolence of your adopted God." The more the sun sank behind the horizon, the more visible the speaking entity became. It -- for it was difficult for Jonah to ascribe a gender to such a creature, whose voice and appearance suggested both and neither at the same time -- did not seem to touch the ground, but rather hover just above it. It was so tall... tall enough that even though Jonah was feet above the ground, this entity still looked down upon him. It glowed like moonlight captured, and the victim was cowed under its chilly, pupilless gaze. "Perhaps the gods of your ancestors would have served you better."

"Am I dying?" The whispered words seemed to be perfectly understood by this discarnate being. Jonah watched the last tendrils of sun disappear, gazing blearily through the being's form.

"Unfortunately, you are not. Not yet." It seemed distressed about this fact, as if Jonah's living state was undesirable. "But I am here. And I am not to return without you."

The constant itch of crawling and inching insects was maddening, but Jonah could not scratch. He imagined they burrowed under his skin and made lavish homes of him. Siphoning life-sustaining substances from his tissues and veins and arteries. "Kill... kill me."

A gust of a breeze; the being had sighed. "I cannot. That is not my jurisdiction. I must wait..."

A full twenty-four hours after Jonah had been lashed to the tree and fed the sickening cocktail, the man was wailing in agony yet again. His limbs, blackened with gangrene. His mucous membranes, excreting blood and pus, attracting burrowing insects. His digestive system, little more than a breeding ground now. The discarnate entity had faded -- but Jonah knew it was still there. Somewhere. Waiting. Waiting for him to die.

The increasingly foul smell rising from his body, exacerbated by the sun, caused him to dry-heave constantly. Burning bile trickled from the corner of his mouth, searing his cracked lips and blistering skin. He no longer excreted, but the feces already expelled had attracted a myriad of insects. Maggots squirmed over and into him, and he was powerless to stop them.

When the being returned to Jonah's weakening vision, the man's hands and feet were swollen and black. His belly was bloating, and not from fullness; the bacterial and chemical reactions in his digestive tract had caused a merry gas buildup that wouldn't be expelled by normal means. "Kill me..."

The being tsked. "We have discussed this."

"What... _are_ you..."

"You know me. I am Angeu."

Jonah's whimper was soundless. "Please..."

"Hush, Seán. I am only the guide. The psychopomp. I am not a life-taker."

Jonah did not bother to correct Death on its own name.

When the sun rose to its peak on the third day, Jonah could neither speak nor shriek. His eyes had become so dry that the lids did not even close, leaving him staring unblinkingly at the horizon before him. His heart was a rapid death-knell in his chest, pushing desperately against his rib cage as if trying to escape. He could no longer feel the maggots and larvae crawling over and inside him, feeding at his excreted fluids, glutting on his decay. Pits in his flesh emitted pus and blood where the gangrene had not yet made him tough and impenetrable; bacteria devoured what the insects did not.

And yet by the time Angeu appeared yet again, Jonah's brain and heart were only just entertaining the idea of giving up.

"Are you yet ready to follow me?"

Of course, Jonah no longer had ability to answer. But the psychopomp picked the answer from his feverish mind as easily as one plucks fruit from a tree. "Mm, yes. Close, you are. Very close. I have been thinking, Jonah. Thinking of how you came to be here. Betrayed by a god, as you betrayed yours. I, who led the good Father to his afterlife much as I will lead you to yours, know that you did not murder him. But one thing I have learned about many Christians, especially in this time of mankind's evolution, is their capacity for treachery. They serve a jealous and vengeful God, they do. And they act in kind.

"Come with me, Jonah. Come with me, little Dove, and your gods will forge you a new destiny... for they are a forgiving lot, they are. And they love their children."

Jonah expelled his last breath, and Angeu, who hears all things, heard the words clearly as if they had been screamed from his cracked and blackened mouth. _"I am not Jonah!"_

The discarnate being smiled upon the spirit that stepped from the decayed and gangrenous body to join him in his realm. "Welcome, Seán. The Morrígan await you..."


End file.
